No, not -A- Doctor.

[xyzzysqrl]

So I've been watching the new Dr. Who series, using my broadband internet connection magical mystical miracle power to see television signals as they drift past. (Okay, okay, it's bad of me. But I have every intention of picking up the DVD box, even MOREso if they include the Confidential episodes.) I love it. I think it's fantastic. It's what I vaguely recall from old PBS reruns of the original show mixed with a heavy dose of, of all things, Lexx. I like that. ... On the other hand, I don't remember a lot from those old shows. Hmm.

Now, I know I have a few people who read this journal who're big fans of prior seasons of the show, and I'm curious. Were I to start in on past episodes... where SHOULD I start? What's a nice accessable point in the past to grab ahold and start watching? Or... reading? Listening to radio broadcasts? Something?

Where does a budding fan pick up from wondering "What's that blocky angular head-shaped thing the Doctor recognizes in the museum?" on his way to learning more?

Comments

[slipscale.livejournal.com]

I'd start with Tom Baker, personally. He's my favorite. The Tom Baker/Peter Davison era produced some of the best stories. However, for important backstory you should likely start with Jon Pertwee...

As for when to start? Well... Probably with the first story for each Doctor, after their regeneration. They tend to trade out companions with each regeneration.

Also - http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/

Has info on Dr Who you may find useful.

Particular stories to look for - Earthshock, Resurrection of the Daleks, the Leisure Hive, Logopolis, Ark in Space, Horror of Fang Rock

Just my two bits.

We have some disagreements.

[seawasp]

Horror of Fang Rock is great, but one has to know Leela before that one works as well as it does.

The Davison era was almost universally bad, from my PoV. Davison was handed the lamest scripts any Doctor ever had to play, had no handle on what he wanted to do with the Doctor at first, and by the time he did start to settle in, they killed him. (he also had ALL the companions I disliked most, and completely ruined one of my favorite ones)

Available on DVD are a several very good Doctor Who eps: Jon Pertwee's _The Green Death_, and Tom Baker's _Pyramids of Mars_ and, of course, the Key To Time sequence. I'm hoping they put out _Genesis of the Daleks_ soon because it's one of my all-time favorites.

Well...

[seawasp]

... there are plenty of Dr. Who guides out there. If you want to learn just from watching, you'll get recommendations for just about every Doctor. The "classic" one -- the Doctor most familiar around the world -- is Tom Baker, the Fourth Doctor.

The summary: The Doctor is a renegade Timelord, a native of the planet Gallifrey. The Timelords usually don't DO much of anything and are a pretty stultified and inflexible culture, using their control of time to eliminate threats but otherwise pretty much staying to themselves. The Doctor can't stand not acting when he sees things that he thinks are wrong; this makes him an outcast. Early on he was running from the Timelords; later he was a sort of grudgingly-accepted outcast who was called upon to do dirty jobs on occasion.

Timelords "regenerate" when they take mortal injuries or otherwise are apparently killed. They can do this a total of 12 times, giving them 13 total lives. Some Timelords can control this process; the Doctor either cannot or doesn't bother. When he regenerates, therefore, he transforms, becoming a quite different person -- same memories, but new personality and appearance. Eccleston is playing the Ninth Doctor.

The Doctor's classic enemies have been the Daleks (a pitiless race of cyborg war-machines that "exterminate!" all other lifeforms), the Master (another renegade Timelord, but this one as evil as they come, using his power in various attempts to dominate the universe), the Cybermen (the Borg before the Borg were invented), and a cavalcade of other beings, races, and forces.

I'm partial to the Third and Fourth Doctors (Pertwee and Tom Baker).

Re: Well...

[seawasp]

I'll add that in *THIS* setting, Gallifrey has apparently been destroyed and the Doctor (and possibly a few other renegades) is the only Timelord left. Also, in the Fox TV Doctor Who movie (accepted as canon by BBC), it was established that The Doctor is half human, which may explain some of his oddities.

Re: Well...

[slipscale.livejournal.com]

The BBC actually accepted that as canon? ~Shudder~ Ugh.

Re: Well...

[seawasp]

My wife and I -- both long-term fans -- loved the movie. Wish I could get it on DVD. You want "ugh", watch "Black Orchid" again. Dear GOD that was a bad ep.

Re: Well...

[slipscale.livejournal.com]

I struggle to see anything even vaguely worthwhile in that movie. They offed the Doctor in a really pointless way, the Master was reduced to a stereotypical thug of a villain and they casually slapped every Doctor Who fan in the face and tore up everything that had been written prior to that movie with this pointless "half-human" nonsense.

Re: Well...

[xyzzysqrl]

But it was fun to watch. So I enjoyed it.

Re: Well...

[seawasp]

Sometimes death IS pointless. And as they were doing a regeneration scene, it made sense to be senseless, so to speak. (Plus it was really the Master's fault anyway). And the "half-human" theory was around for YEARS before the movie; my friends and I were guessing that one back in the early '80s.

I did want a different choice as an actor for the Master, but c'est la vie.

And the soundtrack (which I have) kicked ass.

Re: Well...

[phennphawcks.livejournal.com]

It was pretty bad, but the TARDIS interior had a pretty funky dtemapunk thing going. I wish they could have reused that set for the current TARDIS interior. Don't get me wrong, the current design has its charm as well, but 900 years old pieces of horrendously advanced technology just scream out for the steampunk look in my opinion.

Plus that bit where the policebike drives into the TARDIS was pretty funny.

Re: Well...

[xyzzysqrl]

Well. I know a LITTLE about the show's premise. Enough to have picked up a bit of that.

And I watched and really enjoyed the Fox movie, too.

Re: Well...

[rubberskunk.livejournal.com]

The funny thing is that Gallifrey was destroyed - in the BBC books that were put out. I think I even have the specific book around here somewhere.

The other funny thing is that the Daleks weren't involved at all, which means that canon doesn't make much sense. But anyway, it never really really has for the Doctor anyway.

[patcat.livejournal.com]

As others have mentioned, Doc #4 is the best place to start, IMHO. While some might recommend starting with his first serial, 'Robot', I recommend skipping forward a few and going for 'Genesis of the Daleks' instead. Remember the bit in 'Dalek' where the Doctor mentions their creator? It's in Genesis that you actually meet him.
And if you like that, you can go for the next serial, 'Revenge of the Cybermen', whence comes the head you see in 'Dalek'. After that, well...

[rubberskunk.livejournal.com]

I've seen a few eps, mostly from Doctor Who marathons in college. Here are the favs of what I've seen:

- The War Games - one of the few 2nd Doctor bits around, probably the penultimate in multi-multi-episode Ring Saga type Who eps, before they started shortening them. I mean, long. But it was also really cool and introduced the whole Timelords concept.

I must admit that I've never really gotten into Pertwee's stuff. I kind of liked The Daemons when I saw it, home of the famous quote, "chap with the wings, 5 rounds rapid"... but then there's Inferno *shudder*.

Tom Baker is always a safe choice. I've seen several of the earlier ones, and they were always pretty good - that one Dalek one was very good - The Deadly Assassin, etc.

Davison was okay, but sometimes got very... I don't know, dull? Kill Adric - please?

Colin Baker was where the scripts basically went to pot. Although the Trial of a Timelord set wasn't too bad, mostly.

I liked Sylvester McCoy - Curse of Fenric, Silver Nemesis, that other bizarre one about Merlin... just don't see the first ones for either Colin Baker (Twin Dilemna) or especially McCoy (Time and the Rani). Time and the Rani was nothing but screaming companion Mel for seemingly half the ep. No way.

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

Survival, with the Planet of the Cheetah People, was nice, as was the Greatest show in the Galaxy. The episode where they had a werewolf I was hoping would turn into a companion. Her makeup was amazing.

[lynxara.livejournal.com]

I've gotten into Dr. Who in a remarkably similar way, and I've been told that you can basically watch things in whatever order after you've settled on a Doctor to like. Some of it will be good, some will be bad, but much of it will bear little resemblance in tone and style to other things you watch. Which, honestly, is sort of the fun.

The Tom Baker stuff, aside from the new stuff, is the most easily accessible. It's highly reminiscent of a lot of American sci-fi, but with that smart, angry British edge that has frankly always made Dr. Who better. It's very well-represented on DVD, so if you have a Netflix subscription or something like that you could just cycle through some box sets.

[phennphawcks.livejournal.com]

You should be able to watch Doctor Who Confidential online at www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho but you need RealWretchedPlayer installed for that.

As fot that dustbin-thing in the museum, that was a Dalek. They were supposed to be intergalactic Nazis who considered any form of life other than Dalek life to be vermin and unfit of existence. The older Daleks weren't as impressive in battle as the one in last week's episode, but they had the advantage of sheer weight of numbers back then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalek

They were created by a man named Davros. A man who was, by most reasonable definitions, a complete and total freaking nutter. Just as Hitler, the leader of the master Ayran race was a short dumpy Austrian with a comedy mostashe, so Davros was a horribly mutated cripple with a superiority complex and a very short temper. His wheelchair resembled the bottom half of a Dalek tank.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davros

There was a Doctor Who miniseries of sorts done in Flash and released on the Web a few years back. It's.... interesting, but I can't help but feel that The Master steals the show here, as The Doctor's not-entirely-willing-and-rather-disgruntled companion.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/webcasts/shalka/

[phennphawcks.livejournal.com]

Actually, after digging around a little, there were actually 3 of these Flash minis made, one of them written by Douglas Adams, no less.

Shada (the Douglas Adams one) - http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/webcasts/shada/

Real Time (Featuring the Doctor's other mechanized arch-nemesis) - http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/webcasts/realtime/

[rancourt.livejournal.com]

Hi there. I'm going to briefly pull 'self-proclaimed Dr. Who expert' rank (I got me a badge for fanatical excellence!) which no one, of course, has to validate, and suggest the following.

How to start? Go to www.drwhoguide.com and check out the multi-page spoiler-level synopses of every classic episode, including the ones destroyed and presumed lost for good. The episodes, radio stories, audiobooks, and official BBC books are *all* written up there in obsessive, psychotic detail. For those of us without $25k to spend on getting it all, it's a wonderful place to begin, and it offers character cross-references and footnotes to explain points for the newbie.

For jumping in and buying an episode or two, Tom Baker is definitely the most accessible Doctor to begin with -- he and his successor, Peter Davison, were responsible for what many consider to be the 'golden age of Who.' (Personally, I attribute this more to the excellent scripts during the end-o-Baker/beginning-o-Davison era.) The early-to-mid Baker episodes were largely horror-esque -- if you liked The Unquiet Dead, you'll find plenty of episodes in that tone there. Later Baker became sci-fi focused, and led into the classic Davison sci-fi story arcs. The E-Space trilogy (Full Circle/State of Decay/Warrior's Gate) were IMHO quite good, as was The Deadly Assassin, and the regeneration arc (Keeper of Traken/Logopolis/Castrovalva) is a must-see.

Pyramids of Mars and The Talons of Weng Chiang are also fairly good, as were The Horror of Fang Rock, The Mind Robber, The Seeds of Doom, and The Face of Evil -- an episode about a carved face of The Doctor found in a remote jungle setting. I would also highly recommend Genesis of the Daleks, to show you just how much the different Doctors may vary, and to give you a fun little look back at the peppergrinder killing machines before they were quite so pitiable.

I do *not* recommend the webcasts to start.

And finally, I'm surprised no one seems to have understood your question! The severed metal head that the Doctor is speaking to at the very beginning, before the Dalek appears, is the head of a 1974-era Cyberman. The final first Doctor episode The Tenth Planet introduces them, and Earthshock, a fifth Doctor episode, is probably the Cybermen episode I remember best.

For those who hate Adric, let me simply say that Adric was the Wesley Crusher of Doctor Who, and frankly, I feel he was unfairly villainized.

- Dusty (The Who is strong with this one)

[phennphawcks.livejournal.com]

Oh, blocky angular head type thing! That's a Cyberman. Think Borg and you're not too far off.

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

Others have given much better advice.

Tragically, there isn't as much 1st Doctor or 2nd Doctor material left as there are of the rest. Tapes were destroyed or decayed, and there's a huge list of "look for copies" of things they need to restore stories.

John Pertwee & Tom Baker were the ones I'm most used to seeing, and consequently my favourite. Baker was quirky, but Pertwee had UNIT and I liked the continuity. The end of War Games, the final #2 Dr. Who story arc, involved calling in the Time Lords, which resulted in the Doctor's Tardis being locked to Earth.

I've always thought of Peter Davidson as Tristan from All Creatures Great and Small. He made an okay Doctor, but had the failings mentionned. I thought Sylvester McCoy was okay, but a little silly. I never saw the Colin Baker ones enough to form a full opinion, but thought quality varied.

Whovian first, Furry second.